March 2016

March 25, 2016

The sweet twang of bluegrass is just the right sound for the sweet happy ending of “Bright Star,” a musical based on a newspaper item found by Edie Brickell describing a miracle. Working with Steve Martin, a not so wild and crazy guy in his current incarnation as Americana icon, the two have composed country songs for a band that plays from inside an A-frame house. Pushed along Broadway’s Cort Theater stage as scenes change, the house is home to a family near Asheville, North Carolina, when son Billy Cane (A. J. Shively)) comes back from the war, and wants to be a writer. This post-war moment flashes back twenty-three years, to a spirited girl named Alice Murphy, with a story to tell.

March 24, 2016

Steven Page, a guy-next-door type who co-founded a Canadian pop band called the Barenaked Ladies, and left to pursue a solo career in 2009, performs at the Café Carlyle for two weeks. You won’t be singing along to his tunes of day-to-day male angst. That’s because his tunes are not familiar: he has composed all of his material with several collaborators including Craig Northey who joins him on electric guitar and vocals. Page moves between piano and acoustic guitar, and Kevin Fox plays the cello. The ensemble makes for an excellent accompaniment to songs about a songwriter who may or may not have gone dry: “No Song Left to Save Me,” he sings with heartfelt verve in this highly entertaining show.

March 16, 2016

Joan Osborne’s many fans expected her to sing her signature “One of Us” at the Café Carlyle this week, but instead she sang a specially designed show of Bob Dylan tunes, and had us all in a head bobbing sing-along. “Who knew the Carlyle could become a hootenanny,” she quipped after telling tales of performing at Delta 88 and Mondo Cane on Bleecker Street. Bringing her downtown bluesy flair uptown, from “Highway 61,” to “Tangled Up in Blue,” to “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” some songs well rehearsed and some just winging it, the evening was a rediscovery of familiar Dylan, re-mined for new riches.

March 15, 2016

Forget Cats. So much has spun off T. S. Eliot’s poetry, the Wasteland and Four Quartets scribe would be especially laughing from the grave with Noah Haidle’s surreal play Smokefall, a MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theater. If you pay attention to the Playbill’s author note where Haidle claims to be living in Detroit with his wife and their nine cats, you can guess what you are in for. Details matter. The colonel (Tom Bloom), one of play’s characters, has dementia and still manages to advise, never go to Detroit. Among the other odd characters residing in the family’s house in Grand Rapids, Michigan is his daughter Violet (Robin Tunney in her stage debut), pregnant with twin boys, and granddaughter Beauty (Taylor Richardson), silent for most of the play. She’s decided never to speak again after hearing her parents quarrel. Her diet consists of earth, tree bark and paint, particularly of a sea green hue. Picky, picky! Most formidable is Footnote (Zachary Quinto), a narrator of this family’s lore, a philosopher, who doubles as one of the twins about to be born. Yes, prepare for birth!

March 14, 2016

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a popular film series at Lincoln Center, was particularly robust this year. Following upon the American Academy Awards season, Rendez-vous was especially refreshing with so many films directed by women. In general, the French film industry seems less mired in obsessions with political diversity, and P.C. poses. Men and women act in one another’s films with such fluidity, it is hard to label any one filmmaker as simply director, actor, or writer. How do you get a movie made? Well, the process starts with a good script. Julie Delpy’sLolo,Alice Winocour’s Disorder, Emmanuelle Bercot’sStanding Tall, and Maiwenn’sMy King were all scripted and directed by these talented women. Bercot starred in Maiwenn’s feature. And Alice Winocour co-wrote Deniz Gamze Erguven’s Mustang, one of this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar contenders. Of the full-length fiction features, Mustang’s was the only woman director. During Rendez-vous, which ended last night, I had an opportunity to speak to several filmmakers about their work, and the challenges of making film in France. Great news: these films are all coming to a theater near you.

Julie Delpy’s comedy, Lolo opened this weekend to strong reviews. This actor/writer/director is well-known to American audiences, notably for Two Days in New York which starred Chris Rock as the straight man to utter eccentrics.

March 11, 2016

Cults, car chases, a kid with lazer beam eyes, a satellite from outer space! What more could you want in a movie? As director Jeff Nichols said over high tea at 21 this week, “I wanted to make a sci fi-chase movie.” As he did in his film Take Shelter, Nichols cast Michael Shannon as his alter ego, a man exploring new roles in his life as he marries and becomes a father. In Midnight Special, the typical family is complicated by the paranormal, and the bizarre codes of “the Ranch,” led by Sam Shepard who needs the boy and his powers. The only recourse is to flee.

March 10, 2016

What a coup! Publicist Peggy Siegal exulted in the day’s headlines: drones taking down 150 al-Shabab inductees in Africa. The occasion was a luncheon at la Grenouille to celebrate the movie Eye in the Sky. Directed by Gavin Hood and starring Helen Mirren, with Alan Rickman in his last performance for the screen, this nail-biting drama, a behind the scenes look at what it takes to fight terrorism could not be more relevant, and Siegal feigned taking credit for planting the story to support the film opening this week.Mirren plays Colonel Powell, who displays the remarkable cool and determination necessary in the decision making process. Do we proceed, and bomb three wanted terrorists and two men wearing suicide vests, when there is possible collateral damage in the person of a single little girl selling bread nearby, or do we risk the possibility of the martyrs killing dozens in a marketplace or other densely populated location just to save the girl? The movie teeters on this narrow edge. Alan Rickman delivers a key line: “Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.”

March 09, 2016

Sarah Jessica Parker is a terrific actress. That’s what artist Eric Fishl, in his role as Guild Hall’s President of the Arts and gala host, said on Tuesday night at the Rainbow Room where the Sex & the City star was being feted for a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts. On the red carpet, she gave her insider East Hampton shopping tips to one reporter and told another about her new HBO series Divorce: “I play a married woman, sort of.” And then accepting her trophy, she deftly segued to delivering an awards presentation to Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall’s executive director, now retiring after sixteen years. We should have realized the bait and switch: husband Matthew Broderick was nowhere in sight, in fact attending the opening night of Disaster! Then again, where was she last year when he was awarded? Doesn’t “lifetime achievement” mean anything?

March 07, 2016

A local Liberian warlord’s women in a bare hut in Eclipsed at the Golden Theater are called wife #1, #3, and #4, but as written by Danai Gurira, they could not be more individual if you knew them by their mother-given names. Unseen, when he comes by, “C.O.” beckons them. Each returns to the room, hollow eyed, and sponges off her private parts. #2 has taken arms: gun toting and tough, she bears rice and vitriol. They only way to keep the warring men off, is to fight. This all woman production, directed by Liesl Tommy, is feminist, empowering in the proverbial world gone mad. Finding humor and heart in the most atrocious circumstance, this transplant from the Public Theater is essential theater.